The Bandy Santy

Down the chimney on backwards hands,
Comes the bandy Santyman.
Across the chimney breast he slithers,
His cape a smear in soot and feathers,
Coal black eyes and teeth like knives,
The Bandy Santy has arrived.

His lispy tongue is dark and slick,
And up your spine he wants to lick.
About his waist his beard is wound,
A greyish, ropey, hairy, hound.
His bandy sack is black and grim,
and terrible shapes move within.

Beware the Bandy Santy child,
He is not jolly, he is not mild.
And if he spies you out of bed,
His beard you’ll feel about your head.
Into the terrible bandy sack,
And then up across his bandy back.

And up and up the chimney pot,
Will be your swift and awful lot
For when he reaches near the top,
He’ll turn and fumble at the knot.
And down, and down the wretch will tumble
To land with all their bones a jumble.

So heed my tale, if you would,
And please be gentle, kind and good.
Or else the Bandy Santy call,
And to your end, you may fall…

…Merry Christmas all, from The Gurrier.

*Update: Illustration by the demonically talented Mr. Neil Struthers.

It’s all over folks. The BBC calls time on the boom years, ‘Irish economy goes into recession’. It’s been a grand ten years or so, more or less. We’ve had some good times, ate some flat sambos*, enjoyed many a pot of the green sauce. Bought a shit load of stuff, ran up some eye watering credit card debt and brought the tenements back to Dublin. But now we are fecked. Time to don the sackcloth and ashes of our forefathers and get back to the begrudgery.

Perhaps even emigrate to Wales. According to the BBC again (so you know it’s true),

The Irish began arriving in Wales in the 1840s. They were the largest single group of immigrants to play a part in the story of Wales.

This prompted comment in Parliament, and the Monmouthshire Merlin newspaper commented on “the alarming and lamentable appearance of the streets of Newport, crowded with many hundreds of famishing Irish”.

Prior to this, in some quarters there’d long been a suspicion about the Irish – in earlier times there were rumours that the immigrant Irish sucked the blood of sheep, murdered children and ran “faster than any dog”.

It’s all true you know, we do suck off the occasional sheep and run faster than any dog. If greyhound racing was an Olympic sport, that also allowed human vs canine speed trials we’d be bringing home a kennel load of medals and all the pedigree chum a man could ever need in these straightened times.

But we cannot let the passing of the great green beast that’s haunted us these past ten years go unmarked. An epitaph or two should be be scratched upon the tomb of the Celtic Tiger, for now we live in the swirling detritus of it’s passing and the approaching shitstorm of our own hubris.

September 2008

Was it for this the Fianna Failers spread
Their greasy palms open wide;
For this that all our good times went,
For this Liam Lawlor died,
And Charlie Haughey and Des Traynor,
All that delirium of the knaves;
The Celtic Tiger’s dead and gone,
It’s with auld Bertie in the grave.

(with apologies to W.B.)

*Note to my American friends, ‘a sambo’ is Hiberno English slang for a sandwich. A contraction of the mangled pronunciation of sandwich as ‘sambidge’ or ‘sangwedge’. Got to love a bit of slang that inadvertently crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries. I imagine many Americans are surprised to see the signage on local delivery vans over here advertising ‘Sean’s Sambos’.

]]> http://thegurrier.com/2008/09/26/mistah-tiger-he-dead/feed/ 4 http://thegurrier.com/2006/11/08/nooooooooo/ http://thegurrier.com/2006/11/08/nooooooooo/#comments Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:50:19 +0000 Donal doggerelthirtysomething http://thegurrier.com/2006/11/08/nooooooooo/

Farewell the nights, farewell the days,
To blissful evenings, in endless haze,
The Gurrier’s spent, his days are numbered,
This aging pate, it longs to slumber,

He’s had his six, and twenty more,
and passed another three or four,
In burned out cars, or on the floor.

Of friends, whom have long now passed,
From knacker drinking on the grass,
Whilst ‘ere he lazed in pastures greener,
the world has turned, and gotten meaner.

Across a thousand days and nights,
He’s barked and raged and called you ‘shites!’,
But now the long black veil is close,
He feels as one become a ghost,

This bloom of youth has tarried long,
’tis time to end with wine and song,
For can a man spend all his days,
In joyful unencumbered rage?

For soon he’ll surely step awry,
and the cup of rage will runneth dry!
With spleen all spent, and choler choked,
will then we see The Gurrier yoke’d.
To distant dreams of a far off places,
Where lies respite from human races.

But worry not, my fiendish friends,
For soon we sweetly make amends.
No, not for him, that Shangri-La,
If you want us, we’ll be in the bar.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a louse.
The mantraps were hung by the chimney with care,
In the hopes that St. Kesey soon would be there.

The Gurrier, I was nestled all snug in my bed
While visions of murder danced in my head.
And just as I settled down for a nap,
Having juiced up my brains with a whiskey nightcap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see who I could batter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Then the old shotgun through the window went smash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave sinister lustre to the dread objects below.
When, rising afore me before I could think
A deadly sled, and eight feral mink.

With a familiar driver, so deadly and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be that prick.
More rapid than the Luas his vermin they came
And it chilled my old bones when he called them by name!

“Now Poxer! now, Joxer! now, Anto and O’Toole!
On, Vomit! On, Stupid! on, Bono and Poole!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now smash away! Smash away! Smash away all!”

As kindling that before an inferno does burn,
When they meet with an obstacle, crawl up like a worm
So up to the house-top the vermin they crept
With a sled full of dread, and St. Kesey, I wept.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on my roof
The scratching and pawing of each little hoof
As I drew in my head, and was loading my gun
Down the chimney Kesey came at a run

He was dressed all in leather, and on his head was a hood
And his clothes were all stained with ashes and blood.
A big black sack he had flung on his back,
And he looked like the devil, as he advanced to attack.

His eyes-how they blazed! brows hooded and scary!
His teeth were like needles, and I said a hail Mary!
His big evil mouth was a horrifying sight,
And the beard of his chin was as black as the night.

The stump of a leg he held tight in his teeth
And the gore it encircled his gob like a wreath.
He had a dreadful visage and evil intentions,
For out of the bag, he drew devilish inventions!

He was massive and sinister, this bastard room raider,
And I shat in my pants, before my invader!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Filled me with a dark and deepening dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work
And drew from the bag, a mewling grey jerk.
And laying him out with a blow to the head,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he fled!

“Enjoy the Wahlberg, that pox, he is cursed,
Another day in the bag and me head would have burst.”
As I turned and I saw the grey fellow was smoking’
He looked like that poor little creature from Tolkien.

Kesey sprang to his luge, to his mink gave a kick
And away he went, St. Kesey the Prick.
But I heard him expound, ‘ere he slid out of sight,
“Happy Christmas, yeh pox, you’re a dirty auld shite!”

Merry Christmas from The Gurrier.

Bronze of skin and tawny limbed,
The British beef in sunlight limned,
With mighty hocks and heads like blocks,
They charge together with brains of rocks.

‘Quick lads, quick its time to scrum,
So gird your loins and lick your thumb,
And lay your hand ‘pon that fellows bum.’

A grand and ‘stonishing sight to see,
these men of England on bended knee.
Each one a vast pot roast of chap,
who would eschew all girly crap.

But place him here on sacred ground,
With all his fellows ranged around.
Filled with pride and thoughts of beer
the end of battle drawing near.

These men of iron, men of steel,
Thoughts turn sudden now to feel,
A pang of fear that in the grip,
Of passions play their motions tripped.

And on the turf they did spill,
Much more than blood upon the hill.
‘But no you jest’ I hear them rumble,
‘Its just a game of rough and tumble.’

So off they go at end of play,
To baths and showers that are not gay.
No you lads have nought to fear,
Just don’t ever call them…queer.